Talking About Personal Sex

There is considerable evidence that talking about sex is related to overall happiness in couples' relationships.  Both the frequency and the quality of talking about sex are strongly correlated with a couple's happiness, particularly for women. In one study, 50% of the women who said that they discussed their sexual feelings with their husbands were also very satisfied with the relationship, compared to 9% who did not discuss their sexual feelings with their husbands.  Research indicates that it is indeed important for couples to have intimate conversations about sex. In other words, make a love map of your partner's sexual preferences. 

Yes, there can be several factors causing the lack of sexual desire, including medications, hormone fluctuation, physical and psychological issues, and unresolved conflicts and resentment. But often, what is really missing are intimate conversations.  In fact, trust, which is so important in healthy relationships, can be strengthened if we are able to talk to each other about sex.  But---it is important to talk openly without a blaming tone.

So how might a couple have personal conversation about sex?  What are examples of the kinds of conversation you might wish to have with your partner?  Try these questions to start your conversation:

About Feelings and Intimacy-- There is an old saying that some people need sex to feel close but others only want sex when they already feel close.  Do you think that difference exists between us?  Is it a problem?  If so, how can we make it better?    What makes sex more romantic and passionate for you?

About Libido--  What would be a good way for us to handle one of us wanting sex and the other not being interested at the moment?  What would be a good way for us to initiate sex?  Can we come up with a signal to let each other know that we're interested (or not)?

Touching and Being Touched-- There's an old song about liking a lover with "slow hands."  Is that so for you?  Would you like me to touch you more slowly or faster?

For Women Only-- Many women say that they cannot ask for what they want concerning nonsexual physical affection from their spouse, such as being cuddled, held, or touched affectionately without feeling pressured to have sex.  How do you feel about that?

For Men Only-- Many men say that they wish that their partner would pay more attention to their penis.  Is that true for you?

Now that you have read these questions for conversations, what do you think? Do they shock you, surprise you, intimidate or interest you? Or do you already have such conversations?  If so, good for you!  Any honest personal conversaion you can have about sex will likely improve your relationship in bed and out--again, IF you talk openly and gently with each other.  If you want more such examples of questions, email me:  jimcoving1@aol.com

Sliding Doors to Good Marriages

When a couple sits in my office and tells me why they are seeking counseling, I usually hear a litany of complaints and accusations--all describing incidents when each felt dismissed, ignored, attacked and criticized.  But the issues that a couple hope to address and resolve are often not really the problem.  The complaints are often symptomatic of something else: the lack of emotional connection, or as John Gottman refers to it: a deficit in attunement. (from Gottman's latest book, What Makes Love Last?)

What is attunement?  It is the desire and ability to understand and respect each other's inner world.  It's the feeling of being there for each other, feeling cherished. To love and to cherish actually means "to hold close to one's heart."  When that dynamic is missing, trust begins to erode and couples become more distant and angry.

In the words of John Gottman: In a committed relationship, partners constantly ask each other in words and deeds for support and understanding.  In research parlance I refer to such requests as "bids." They can be as simple as "Could you get me a beer?" or as profound as "I need you," after a scary medical diagnosis.  Not all bids are obvious.  Many of them get missed, ignored, or misinterpreted.  One partner may say "I love you," expecting the other to turn around and initiate a hug.  But the partner, distracted and just half-listening, says, "I know you do."

Every bid made in a relationship initiates what I call a sliding door moment.  When one partner expresses a need for connection, the other's response is either to slide open a door and walk through or keep it shut and turn away.  Imagine that Henry settles into his favorite chair to watch a movie.  His wife, Cindy, wanders over, gazes at the screen, and sighs, "Wow--Paris always looks so gorgeous in movies!"  There is a huge catalog of reactions Henry might have to his wife's wistful comment.  He could slide the door open by saying something like, "I hope someday we get to go there."  Or he could turn away by offering a grouchy grunt or saying "Shhh, I'm trying to watch!" A response that doesn't demonstrate interest and connection, slides the door shut.

All long-term relationships are riddled with sliding door moments that end poorly.  The partner may be tired, or annoyed or just focused elsewhere.  Often, we don't think our response, or lack of one, to such a trivial event will matter much.

It's true that turning away from a minor bid is not going to send a relationship hurtling into the abyss.  But an abundance of unhappy endings to these interactions does precipiate danger.  Over time, one partner or both begin to wonder: "Do I come first, or does someone or something else matter more?  Is my partner selfish?  Can I risk continuing to trust?" (Gottman, What Makes Love Last?  p. 32)

Unfortunately when a partner is beginning to ask herself/himself these questions, he or she may begin to withdraw or angrily criticize the other, which will only make things worse, of course. So when I work with couples this is what I teach and emphasize: When one is feeling lonely or not attuned to, the best thing to do is to express your need in an open, non-apologetic, non-judgmental way.  And the best response is to slide the door open, by listening and seeking to understand your partner's complaint--your partner's need. Only in this manner will attunement be felt, your partner feel cherished and your trust sustained. 

No Judgements! Nobody Has To Be Wrong

There is a tendency in marital relationships to assume that if you are upset, somebody must have done something wrong.  Sometimes that is true, of course.  Often it is not true.  Marriage researchers have discovered that most of the time this assumption is unwarranted, and that when partners are upset with each other, neither partner has done anything that is intrinsically wrong. Sixty-nine percent of marital upsets arise from conflicting values, priorities, beliefs, or personal tendencies for which there is no generally accepted standard.  Marriages start to slide when partners assume there is a "correct standard to which they are entitled to hold their partners accountable."  For example, consider the following questions:

• How much arguing is acceptable in marriage?
• How much money should be spent on what type of things?
• How neat and organized should a couple's life be?
• Who should do what chores around the house, how often?
• How much time should be put into career versus family?
• How important is it for the couple to talk about feelings?
• How much and what type of discipline should be used with the kids?
• What kind of sexual activities are acceptable?
• How much financial risk should be taken?

Studies suggest that there are a wide variety of legitimate opinions that partners can take on such questions.  For example, some couples who place high value on personal freedom are happily married and some are not. Happily married partners differ on scores of important values and priorities, but they have one thing in common: They avoid assuming that their partner's values, priorities or opinions are wrong, and instead assume that there are many potentially legitimate ways to live life. 

People destined to succeed understand that if you assume the worst of your partner, you'll get the worst from your partner.  Instead they give their partners the benefit of the doubt; they assume that there is a legitimate reason for their partner's words or actions, even if they don't know what it is yet.

In contrast, when people are destined to fail in their relationships are faced with words or actions from their partners that are upsetting to them, they assume that their partners are acting this way becaue they have misguided reasoning, priorities, motivations or intentions, or that their partners have faulty personality characteristics (e.g., "My partner is just lazy, controlling, insensitive," etc.).

Many of us grow up feeling that we don't have the right to be upset with someone unless that person did something wrong.  So, when we find ourselves upset we tend to automatically assume that the other person did something wrong--otherwise, we wouldn't feel entitled to be upset.

Successful couples find a way out of this dilemma, realizing that it is normal for people to get upset with each other when their expectations are at cross-purposes.  Instead of judging and attacking each other, they articulate their respective needs or viewpoints without judgment, remain open to their partner's emotional reality, respectfully accept differences and work out an appropriate plan or response for meeting each others needs.  Nobody has to be wrong.    Jim Covington

Becoming the LoveMate YOU Want to Be

Steven Stosny (How To Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It), writes: Everyone who enters an intimate relationship with some hope that it might last, would do well to understand this general principle:  To get what you most want from your partner, you must first become the partner you most want to be.

Hmmmmm.......interesting way to think about your relationship, right? How does that work? When relationships become challenging, we usually remain more focused on how our partner is being or behaving, rather than how we (you) are being and behaving.

Stosny points out: Two things happen when you focus too much on what you want from your partner, and  both are bad:

       1. You will likely violate your core value, as you're really saying, "I will not be the compassionate and loving person I truly am until you do what I want." (Of course, this statement assumes your core value is indeed compassionate..or loving, supportive, etc.).

       2. Your partner is likely to react negatively to your critical focus on him or her, even if you were not becoming less of the partner you want to be in reaction to him or her.

In other words, relationships fail when the parties become the partners they think their partners deserve.

So.....according to Stosny, your best chance of changing your partner's behavior is to change what he/she reacts to in you. Your partner is likely to respond in kind to your behavior, whether it is loving, compassionate, and supportive or resentful, demanding, and critical.  This doesn't mean that you shouldn't bring up matters in your relatioship that are distressful to you.  Not at all!  It's the tone of how you bring them up that often matters: compassionately(softly, giving the benefit of the doubt) versus critically or contemptuously.

Even so your partner may still not respond in a caring way.  And I also want to emphasize that when infidelity, abuse and/or addictions are involved, it is more important that the victimized partner be able to stand firm.  In these cases, the core value is self-respect. You are acting for yourself, rather than against your partner. But regardless of how your partner responds, you will feel more authentic and remain true to yourself if you behave like the partner you most want to be. To paraphrase Gandhi, you have to become the change you want to see.

So what are some of the core values you believe you have internalized and are committed to, including your own self-respect?  I will assume they stem from at least one of these:  loving, compassionate, supportive, flexible, appreciatve, respectful...    So what do you think?  Does this make sense?  Yes, like most relationship ideas or approaches, I'm sure there are exceptions and "yes-buts". Nevertheless I like the idea of thinking about what my real core values are anyway and if I am actually living them. I like the idea of being the strong, self-respecting, compassionate person I most want to be, especially when I'm disappointed or hurt or fearful. I think it works most of the time, at least it has for me in my own marriage.

Me, You and Our Emotional Brains

Jake and Miriam entered my office appearing in an upbeat mood and reported the week since I saw them last had gone pretty well.  “Great!” I thought to myself. Then I steered the conversation to reviewing how they had responded to each other in the past week to help them reinforce the more positive interactions they had practiced.

Unexpectedly, Miriam began to recount a conversation they had had when she felt Jake had talked to her in a demeaning fashion, when he wanted her opinion about something.  “I felt attacked!” she said bluntly.  “OK,” I thought, “at least she is simply stating her feelings.”  But Jake rolled his eyes, deeply sighed and exclaimed: “I can’t believe this!  What are you talking about?!” Turning to me he said: “You see what I have to put up with!” It was as though he had lit a match to his wife’s innards.  “Oh that’s good, Jake!  Blame me again! This is classic. You treat me like I’m stupid!”  And so the war begins, again.  Classic indeed.  What happened?

The amygdala took over.  The comedian Flip Wilson used to say: “The devil made me say that!” Maybe he was on to something. In recent years the revolution of neuroscience has discovered that the brain is quite complex and wired in such a way that our cerebral topography favors emotionality, not reason. We now know that the primary and oldest (500 million years) component of the human brain that conducts our emotions, both good and bad, is the amygdala, located in the limbic system.  The part of the brain that helps us think about, control and express emotions is the neocortex, developed much later (60 thousand years ago).

The gradually emerging portrait of the emotional brain gives us an illuminating window of why many couples find it so difficult to contain their reactivity in their communications.  The amygdala’s original purpose was to act as our emergency alert system, leaping into action in response to life or death threats.  This same system is still programmed early on, based on how traumatized, abandoned or lovingly protected we feel in our early childhood.  Often, partners don’t realize that their perceptions and interpretations are influenced by their histories of emotional conditioning and instead continue to insist that the other’s viewpoint is objectively “wrong.”

If the amygdala’s original purpose was to act as our emergency alert system, leaping into action in response to life or death threats, it is apt to activate with particular vigor in intimate relationships, which are so entangled in primal need. When our partner says or does something that telegraphs “This person doesn’t love me! This person is threatening and attacking me! This person is leaving me!” our amygdala scrambles blindly, frantically to the rescue.  Toxic arguments always ensue.  Partner’s bodies become flooded by brain-mediated bodily changes, including a quickened heart rate and release of stress hormones.  John Gottman (Why Marriages Succeed or Fail) says these bodily reactions are always correlated with specific kinds of conflict behaviors: criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling—all of which predict later divorce.

So the amygdala deems a situation to be an emotional emergency and lights up the entire brain and body with bio-emotional fireworks before the neo-cortex ever gets into the act.  It is precisely these kinds of volatile, felt-crisis situations that need to be non-judgmentally addressed in couples counseling. So from the neuroscience perspective, one of my roles as a marriage counselor, is to help each partner become aware of their automatic amygdala triggers and help them activate their prefrontal lobes, enabling the client to shift from the defensive, isolating brain circuits that generate rage and fear to the connecting, healing circuits that mediate caring and longing. In other words, my role is to help couples become aware of the emotional needs and longing that drive their perceptions and the rigid position they take during disagreements.  Indeed, awareness of one’s emotional world is a hallmark of what researchers have defined as “emotional intelligence.”  Emotional intelligence involves knowing and managing one’s emotions, recognizing emotions in others and using these abilities skillfully in relationships to stay connected, rather than alienated.

For a more thorough reading of recent discoveries about the “emotional brain” and how we can actively change our brains and relationships, I highly recommend Mindsight, by Daniel Siegel.  Also, The Neuroscience of Human Relationships, by Louis Cozolino.     Jim Covington

Contempt Stands Alone for Marital Unhappiness

There are two things that people do that sink relationships. One kind is obvious.  It involves being selfish, ignoring the needs of others, bold-face lying, cheating and manipulating.  The other thing has to do with a certain way that people react when they feel their partners are being selfish, or inconsiderate, or having a different opinion, or having to have their own way.  They react by criticizing, judging, and thinking of themselves as somehow better than their partners. They express contempt toward their partners.  For example, they think they‘re right and their partners are wrong expressed as:  I should have known  that you’d screw up again.  Why do I even bother with you? You’re such a jerk! They think they are more emotionally mature.  They think they are better at being in relationships.  Research studies indicate that, of these two things that sink relationships, the second is clearly more toxic than the first and is most likely to lead to divorce.

By the time some couples enter my office for counseling, the major issue I have to address with them first is their contemptuous attitude:  how they demonize one another and how each feels judged by the other.  Contempt is often a natural response to feeling threatened which will need to be explored and brought to awareness. But the demonization must stop; otherwise the combativeness will only get worse.  As I mentioned above, dishonesty, cheating and self-centeredness can be destructive in relationships. However, marital studies suggest that contempt, expressed as self-righteousness, judgmentalism and superiority can be even more destructive. In fact, negative attitudes in marriages are often more destructive than actions.  Marital studies suggest that the tendency to see oneself as better than one’s partner is the greatest destructive force in relationships, even more so than lying, cheating and selfishness. 

Unfortunately, contempt is not only excused in our society, it is encouraged.  We witness it being expressed everyday in the news media, particularly by our elected politicians. The speeches of our country’s leaders are frequently loaded with sneering, disgust and a sense of superiority and they talk about how much better they are than their rivals.  Research on the cultural toxic effects of contempt raises questions about this socially acceptable rhetoric, which only leads to demonization of political rivals both in our own country and internationally. I believe contemptuous rhetoric often leads to war actions.  But that is another story or another blog!  My concern here is how the socially accepted expression of contempt influences how we relate to one another in our personal relationships and how it leads to more emotional strife, disconnection, loneliness and ultimately divorce.

My job as a marriage counselor is to make couples aware of the toxic aspects of contempt and teach them how to express their needs and disappointments to one another without a tone of condemnation and how to stand up for oneself without putting your partner down.   Done right, relationships can be transformed.  I address this in my June, 2012 blog entries (Happy Couples and Good Habits for Good Marriages; check the column to the right).

CAN LOVE LAST?

Can love last? Married love, that is, including romantic love?  Research has suggested that love inevitably fades after about 15 months, maybe less.  After all, if love is a fever, then it has to die down eventually--right?

A book has been written by the same title, Can Love Last? by Steven Mitchell.  I don't agree with all of his views, but I do agree with his take on the role of will in love.  He agrees with the poets and songwriters that chemistry is real; you can't make yourself love anyone.  On the other hand, you can't sustain love without making a conscious commitment to do it.

In recent years, we have learned so much more about the bonds of love through the microscope of science and systematic reasoned exploration.  Hundreds of studies tell us, for example, that love is an exquisitely logical survival code and that the ability to reach out, clearly state your emotional needs and respond to your lover's emotional need for comfort, reassurance, intimacy and connection, are the key ingredients in love.  In fact, we are all wired for love, from infancy on. 

But we make mistakes because we don't undersgtand our needs; we don't have a map of the territory.  We so often send distorted messages, offer advice or problem solving when our partner only needs our emotional presence.  Or we try to hide our emotions when science tells us that our loved one has picked them up from our facial expression almost before our own brain has decided to try and hide them.

But once we know the territory, once we understand the bonds of love, then we can actively, consciously shape these bonds in a way that is new and lasting for human lovers.  What are the bonds of love?  Trust, faithfulness, emotional support, learning to live with differences,  empathy, presence and commitment to meeting each other's needs:  Are you there for me?  Do you see me? (I loved this phrase in the move Avatar: I see you.) Learning to see each other is a "work" that never ends.

In its infatuation stage, romantic love hardly requires any work or effort.  The wish to turn this stage into a lasting romantic relationship is a challenge entailing the investment of blood, sweat, and tears, which doesn't sound romantic at all, of course.  But, hey, all or mostt things worthwhile require work and attention.  Bottom line: love is more than a feeling; it is also an act. In fact, the work of love can in many circumstances enhance the feeling of love.

What is the work? Learning to be present, remain connected and listen without the loss of one's own self. It's learning the alternatives to blaming, criticizing, distancing and dismissing.  It takes effort, but the reality remains: We invest more effort in something which is significant for us; at the same time it is also true that something we invest more effort in becomes more significant.

So finding the right person is not the end of the story.  It is the beginning of a long (preferable enjoyable, meaningful, at times romantic) journey, that is not always easy, sometimes impossible, but doable most of the time.  Sometimes it will require personal sacrifice and effort.  In other words, marriage is a very human experience.

I close with a quote from C.S. Lewis which best expresses what I am trying to share:

If the old fairy-tale ending 'they lived happily ever after' is taken to mean 'they felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married', then it says what probably never was nor ever would be true and would be highly undesirable if it were.  Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years?  What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships?

But, of course, ceasing to be 'in love' need not mean ceasing to love.  Love in this second sense--love as distinct from "being in love"--is not merely a feeling.  It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit.  They can have this love for eah other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself, even when you do not like yourself.  They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be 'in love' with someone else.

'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity; this quieter love enables them to keep the promise.  It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.             Jim Covington